Since getting a full-time teammate for the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career back in 2022, Bubba Wallace has consistently been outrun by the driver in the other 23XI Racing Toyota.
Kurt Busch would have qualified for the playoffs in 2022 had he not been injured. Instead, the spot he earned with his victory at Kansas Speedway went to Team Penske's Ryan Blaney, who ended up being the only driver to qualify for the 16-driver postseason on points in a regular season that saw 15 winners other than Busch.
Wallace took over Busch's No. 45 entry, moving over from the No. 23 Toyota for the playoffs since the No. 45 team was still eligible for the owner title, and then won at Kansas himself.
But he hasn't won since, and Tyler Reddick has been a consistent frontrunner since replacing Busch in 2023. He won twice and made it to the round of 8 in 2023, while Wallace effectively backed into the playoffs on points due to Chase Elliott's injury.
Then in 2024, Reddick won the regular season championship, and his three wins were enough to carry him to his first Championship 4. Wallace, on the other hand, failed to qualify for the playoffs.
Team co-owner Michael Jordan famously said "we don't sign checks for losers" when Wallace was hired to drive for the one-car team back in 2021, and Wallace recently discussed the fact that he doesn't want to simply race for a paycheck, indicating an uncertain future amid his increasingly long win drought and common multi-week stints of relative lack of competitiveness.
Now Reddick and Wallace both have a common teammate in rookie Riley Herbst.
The Herbst signing was one that many questioned, given his relative lack of success in the Xfinity Series. "Late bloomer" is putting it nicely, as it took him until the end of his fourth season in top-tier equipment to find victory lane, and he ended up with three total wins across five seasons and no Championship 4 appearances.
It's no secret that the move largely came down to funding, given Herbst's longtime backing from Monster Energy. And while one can hope that he is a "late bloomer" at the Cup level as well, his start to the 2025 season has left a lot to be desired.
Herbst is one of three full-time drivers without a top 16 finish through six races, and he finds himself in 31st place in the point standings, already 47 points below the playoff cut line.
Reddick is doing what everybody expects him to, sitting up in fourth place in points with two finishes inside the top three. But it is Wallace whose performance has stood out, as he finds himself up in seventh.
Wallace, the driver who has quite literally never outpaced a teammate at the Cup level, finds himself 24 positions ahead of Herbst in the exact same equipment.
That equipment is effectively Joe Gibbs Racing equipment, given the technical alliance between the two teams, and that disparity, even after only six races, is already enough to make one question Herbst's future. In fact, in three Xfinity Series seasons with Joe Gibbs Racing themselves, Herbst went winless.
Corey Heim is largely considered the future of 23XI Racing, but he recently signed a multi-year development deal, which would seem to indicate that the Tricon Garage Truck Series driver isn't going to be moving to the Cup Series full-time yet in 2026.
That deal does, however, include a number of Cup Series starts for 2025, so how Heim performs against Herbst in those select races could be particularly interesting to watch.
Is Herbst just keeping Heim's seat warm at this point? If Heim isn't ready in 2026, could Herbst possibly be replaced by Denny Hamlin himself for a year or two if Hamlin and Joe Gibbs Racing struggle to find sponsorship beyond 2025 in a post-FedEx era?
As goofy as it may sound, don't rule that out; the fact that Kyle Busch and the team ultimately had to part ways after 2022 over lack of sponsorship was something that nobody could have imagined a few months prior.
Either way, Herbst's time in the Cup Series is unfortunately going exactly like many expected it would thus far, and the fact that Wallace appears as though he is in the midst of a breakout year just makes the rookie's performance even more alarming.